Page 65 of Shadow Bound

I half expect the pain of the knife hitting me, but it never comes. It lands with a harshthudsomewhere at my side. Looking down, I find it buried in the material of my T-shirt, pinning me to the board.

“Jesus Christ!” Ryker hollers from somewhere that I can’t see him. When I turn my head to look at my older brother, a blade flies right in front of my nose, before landing in the wood like the other.

Dumbfounded she’d throw a knife that close to my face, I shoot her a look. “Cutting it a little close, Tink!”

A cocky grin grows on her face. “I can get closer,” she taunts. “Now,don’t move.”

Ranger stalks toward her, a hand raised. “I think your little demonstration is ov—”

He doesn’t get to finish because with a knife in both hands, she launches them at me in quick succession. She doesn’t even look where she throws them, her pale eyes are pinned on my twin as they leave her fingers. One blade lands right between my legs—just alittletoo close for comfort. The second lands beside my neck and this time there is the slightest burning sensation from where the blade nicked me.

“I get it, that’s enough—”

Beau’s response is to grab the gun from Winnie’s hand. Once again, without looking at her target, opting to glower again at my brother, she fires the rest of the clip. Bullets hit all around me, all landing less than an inch away from my body.

Dismantling the weapon in record time, she tosses it to the ground. Challengingly, she lifts her chin at my brother. “You still think I’m the wrong person to teach your mate?”

Reluctantly, Ranger shakes his head. “No, but I still don’t like it.”

Winslow wraps her arms around his waist. “You don’t have to like it, but I need you to accept it and support it because I’m going to do it with or without your blessing. I’d prefer it, of course, but I don’t need it.” With that, she presses a sweet kiss to his jaw.

Ranger’s hands clamp down on her hips, holding her close to him. “I’ll support it. You guys are probably right; you need to know how to protect yourself…”

I tune out the rest of their conversation because Isabeau making her way toward me pulls my attention away. The smile that breaks out across my face happens without me being able to stop it. I know she was just showing off—proving to my brothers just how deadly and skilled she is—but I found her little show fucking hot. If my family wasn’t right here, I’d go pin her against one of the closest trees.

She’s fighting a smile herself, the corners of her mouth twitching. When she’s close enough, I reach out and run my fingers down her neck where the top of her tattoo peeks out. I hate that she mostly wears long sleeves, hiding the intricate lines on her arms, but I also find satisfaction in knowing the only time the art is shown is when she’s naked and vulnerable with me.

To my pleasure, she doesn’t push my hand away from her body, she allows me to touch her even with my family nearby. This is a big step for her. She even goes as far as to lean into my touch when I trail my finger down her cheek.

One by one, she pulls the knives out of the board. The one dangerously close to my stirring cock is the last one to go. As she pulls it from the board, her heated gaze holds mine. When her white, perfectly straight teeth bite into her bottom lip, I have to bite back a groan.

With all the knives tucked back into the holsters on her body, she turns her attention to the wound she’d caused on my neck. Her pupils dilate as she takes in the small amount of blood she’d drawn.

“It’s okay, I know you didn’t mean to.”

Beau lifts her hand, her thumb swiping up the blood. “That’s where you’re wrong.” She brings her thumb to her mouth and sucks the blood off. “I definitely meant to. I don’t miss, remember?”

“Fucking hell, Tink.”

Three days.

That’s how long I’ve been at Ransom’s home. That’s how many days we’ve been waiting for our enemies to come knocking, but it’s been silent. And the silence is more torturous than anything Nessa ever did to me. I don’t know how to sit around and wait for something. I’m not made to sit on my ass and do nothing.

Luckily, I’ve had Winslow’s training to keep me busy. Every afternoon, until the sun starts to set and it’s too dark for her to see her target, we’ve been training with weapons. Every day she’s become more and more deadly. She was already pretty good with a knife, but now she’s borderline deadly. Due to the fact she has the healing ability of a human, I’ve been focusing more heavily on guns. Specifically, a rifle. She’ll be more helpful if she’s able to sit back at a vantage point and pick off the enemy from there.

My stomach and head pain have also increased tenfold in the past three days. I still don’t know what’s wrong. Thinking back, I’ve felt off for the past ten months, but I just thought it was the long stretches of time I’d go without feeding, but now I’m feeding regularly, Dr. V has come by with fresh blood bags since I’ve been here. The blood I’m ingesting isn’t tainted, and I’ve had plenty of it, I have no idea what could be causing this…illness.

Gritting through the pain, I stand over Winslow, who is currently lying on her stomach in the dirt, a rifle pressed to her shoulder. We’re farther away from the house today so she can practice her long range accuracy. It reminds me of what I was doing ten months ago, but instead it’s not me with the gun this time and she’s not shooting at Pruitt. We’d nailed targets to roughly ten trees and her goal is to shoot each one of them. We’re even up on a ridge like I was, though it’s not the same one.

My arms are crossed tightly over my stomach, keeping firm pressure to the ache that resides there. It doesn’t help much, but it’s the only relief I feel. The only other time it goes away is when Ransom touches me. When his hands are on me, I lose all ability to think of anything else. I’m only aware of his warm hands and body pressed to mine.

“Winnie, I told you to stop waving your feet like that,” I grit out, rolling my eyes at her feet that are propped up and crossed at her ankles, moving back and forth. My throat is getting tighter, the idea of throwing up no longer seeming unlikely but a true possibility at this point. “You look like you’re at a Sunday picnic, not about to shoot shit.” I bat her swaying feet with my hand. “Enough.”

“You don’t have to be so serious all the time, Beau. The world won’t end if you laugh and enjoy yourself,” Winslow scoffs as she peers through the scope attached to the rifle.

“I don’t know how to do that,” I respond stiffly. “How to…let go. I haven’t had the luxury of being able to smile and laugh. It hasn’t been sunshine and rainbows for most of my life.”

She pulls back from the scope to look up at me, a soft smile on her face. “I didn’t have a lot to be happy about for most of my life—I see dead people, my parents, who were supposed to love me, neglected me and then had me committed against my will.”

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